BitClub is Moving to Bitcoin Cash on February 1st
I have been predicting this ever since Bitclub were a signatory at the New York accord on Bitcoin's scaling future and, finally, today, they have come our of the closet. Don't worry, I think it is a good thing, a necessary thing to advance Coin pay and (hopefully) finally get that baby launched and it certainly doesn't do us any harm at all. here's what they've said in today's announcement...
*This is one of the most important decisions we've ever made... Please Read and Share!
We reached a point where the Bitcoin blockchain (BTC) has become a huge burden to deal with. It's slow, it's expensive, and it's costing our business and more importantly our members (YOU) tens of thousands of dollars each day in transaction fees.
We were hopeful that a scaling solution would emerge but it has not and while Bitcoin continues to gain popularity it's no longer practical for a business like ours to accept it.
Since the start of the year the average cost for a new member paying their $99 USD sign up has been around $17 in fees. We have seen times with $25+ and even some as high as $40 just to send Bitcoin for an invoice. Ouch!
As a company we are mixed on this decision because Bitcoin is actually really great for miners right now. All of these high fees get passed into the blocks and end up being paid into your pocket from each one mined.
Right now each block has between 4-5 Bitcoin (currently about $60,000-$75,000) in transaction fees included as well as the 12.5 reward. In some cases we've hit blocks with 10+ BTC and the highest one to date was 11.3 Bitcoin in a single block (Block #500756).
With this much profit we will continue to mine Bitcoin and pay all mining earnings in Bitcoin. However, we will no longer be accepting Bitcoin for payments and all commissions will also be paid in Bitcoin Cash as well.
What does this mean?
Starting on February 1st we will no longer accept Bitcoin (BTC) only Bitcoin Cash (BCH), which means you will have to purchase Bitcoin Cash from an exchange or wallet provider in order to sign up or purchase mining pools. You can also convert your existing BTC to BCH but either way its only BCH for payments!
We are also paying ALL commissions in Bitcoin Cash!
For example each binary cycle pays out $200 USD worth of Bitcoin (about 0.013 BTC) and starting Feb 1st it will pay the same $200 USD in Bitcoin Cash (about 0.08 BCH). Nothing will change, you will still receive the exact same USD value for everything but instead of being paid in Bitcoin it will be credited to your Bitcoin Cash wallet.
*This includes Binary, Level Up, Matching Bonuses, Infinity Bonuses, and all other commissions. Except that mining earnings will continue to be paid in Bitcoin (BTC) because we will continue mining on the BTC chain and take advantage of the high fees we receive.
Converting BTC to BCH...
We are going to make it very easy to convert your BTC over to BCH and back to BTC as many times as you wish. In fact, you will be able to do this within your back office with only a few clicks.
You will be swapping your virtual balances and we will provide the current market rate for the swap so you can easily transfer any portion of your balance back and forth between BTC and BCH with ZERO fees.
(ED: This is brilliant as it means the exchange of digital currency does not go outside of BCN and there are no costs to you [or losses to you] for swapping them around internally. Only when you take them outside, onto an exchange etc. will you be subject to any real costs.)
Soon after this is live we will also do it for all other coins too. So if you are mining Monero or Ethereum Classic and you would like to have Ether or BCH then you can easily use this feature to swap them in your back office before requesting a withdrawal. Think of this like an internal Shapeshift.
(ED: Shapeshift - if you don't know - is a mobile based Crypto to Crypto exchange app.)
With this feature you can maximize your commissions and wallet balances with ZERO fees. It gives you full control over your wallet balances and most importantly it will help you avoid the huge withdrawal fees being charged on Bitcoin or any other blockchain that might be expensive.
Future Outlook...
It's our hope that a scaling solution happens on the Bitcoin network sometime this year and if it does then we may consider moving back but right now the Bitcoin blockchain is simply unusable for our business needs and we are excited to make this move over to Bitcoin Cash because its fast, cheap, and very liquid.
We believe many businesses will begin switching over to Bitcoin Cash as they begin to feel the pain and high fees of using Bitcoin. We also want to be clear that we are not picking sides in this scaling debate we are rooting hard for Bitcoin but right now BCH offers a lot more value for everyone and it's at the point where the chain is very secure to use.
Plus, we think the value of BCH will continue to go up as the adoption increases and more people support it, so the timing is very good to make this move.
It's our goal to do everything we can in order to make this transition smooth for you and we kindly ask that you spread the word about this and start becoming familiar with using Bitcoin Cash because we will be moving exclusively to it on February 1st!
GPU Repurchases Launch February 1st
(ED: Again, what wonderful news, evergreen GPU mining - it just gets better and better)
Also, starting on February 1st we will begin offering repurchases for the GPU mining pools. This has been a big feature request since we launched the pools over a year ago and there was always an issue with which coin would be repurchased.
For example... We allow you to switch your power and mine whatever coins you wish and it was too hard to calculate an accurate repurchase if an account was constantly switching back and forth.
But the good news is we have fixed this and starting Feb 1st you will begin to see held balances for each coin that you are paid on. Once the coin reaches the required threshold it will automatically force a repurchase for that coin, which pays commissions up-line on each sale just like the BTC partial shares.
All existing shares have the option to set the repurchase percentage to whatever is desired. However, starting on Feb 1st all new shares purchased will default to 30% repurchase and you can change to go higher or lower all the way up to 100% or down to 0% just like our Bitcoin mining shares.
We are also expanding big into the GPU mining market and we believe the GPU pools will have a much improved ROI as we expand the operations. So be ready for a nice upgrade starting February 1st.
No More ClubCoin Virtual Staking
(ED: This is vital information for most of you as I believe 80% of my contacts inside BCN do virtual mining. I have a video on my Bit-Talk site that covers how to set up external wallet mining, but I would wait until we know the full details on the new version of ClubCoin that is coming. The link is immediately below).
We are getting ready to push ClubCoin out to the marketplace but before we can do this we need more nodes to stake on their own. Virtual staking was a good way to earn more CLUB but we now want to grow our nodes.
So starting immediately we will no longer be accepting new ClubCoin virtual staking contracts and we strongly encourage you to download a full node to support the decentralisation of the ledger.
We are planning to have a new version of ClubCoin in the first or second week of February and will be pushing this hard for adoption. Stay tuned for this announcement.
Hardware Wallet Sales Suspended
We've had some issues on getting Hardware wallets delivered so we have decided to put all new orders on hold until we can fulfill them. In many cases we are months behind in some countries and we apologize for not getting this out. We were waiting on a firmware update to be added and this has not happened yet.
Once the new firmware is available you will be able to get your Bitcoin Cash and the updated security features and we will resume selling the wallets.
If you have not received your wallet yet and you would like a refund please contact support and we will be happy to refund you.
Sorry for the delay on this we have been focused on other aspects of our business.
Bitcoin Gold Wallets go LIVE January 17th
Starting on January 17th you will see a Bitcoin Gold wallet just like you see Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. The Bitcoin Gold wallet will give you matching coins based on whatever Bitcoin you had in your wallet when the BTG fork happened.
All you can do with these coins is withdraw them when the wallet goes live, so make sure you get an external Bitcoin Gold wallet set up to request them.
Please Note: There are many new forks being proposed this year and we will NOT be supporting any more of them. So if you want to make sure you get credit for your coins when a new fork happens you must withdraw them from your BitClub wallet.
(ED: Do bear in mind that, indirectly, all BCN members benefit from any additional profits made by the "club" anyway so whilst it may seem, at first, a little unfair that BCN are not giving us Bitcoin airdrops on new forks any more, we still benefit and, of course, if you know one is coming you can put your stash somewhere that does support the upcoming airdrop, whatever that may be. Personal experience tells me anyway that MOST wallets service providers are backing away from these airdrops as they are just too complicated to deal with).
This policy is subject to change if we see something we want to support, but unless we come out and say something you should assume we will not support any new forks!
Ethereum Withdrawals Delayed...
We are working on a new withdrawal system for Ethereum that has been taking longer than expected. This new system will really help boost the accuracy of the payments and allow us to pay much faster. However, right now there are many pending ETH withdrawals that keep piling up daily and we will not be processing these until this new process is in place.
Our goal is to have this fixed within 1 week and we will catch up very fast on all pending withdrawals. If your withdrawal is pending we really apologise for this delay but don't worry you will receive your tokens very soon. This also goes for ETC (Ethereum Classic).
(ED: Please bear in mind that Bitclub "time" can feel like the difference between human years and dog years. We think in dog years when we are waiting fro something to happen and Bitclub use human years - that's a bit of a wacky way of looking at it but when you've been with them for a while, you start to understand what I mean).
Monero Upgrades - A New System
Another token that is hard to manage on a large scale is Monero. This is not just from our side. We are seeing many exchanges having trouble crediting transactions so we are upgrading our system to include a unique payment ID for each withdrawal.
You will receive more details about this on the Monero wallet page when it's ready but basically you will need to generate a payment ID from your Monero wallet or exchange wallet anytime you would like to withdraw. You will be required to put this payment ID into the withdrawal request for it to be processed.
We are holding all Monero pending withdrawals until this system is ready and beware that we will be cancelling all of them once its ready because there is no accurate way right now to pay Monero without a unique payment ID for each transactions.
Again, thanks for your patience on this and all of the other little things that we are constantly needing to upgrade and fix. We are working hard behind the scenes and as we mentioned in the last update before this we have made some BIG changes to our corporate team and processes to ensure that we can keep up with demand in 2018.
We appreciate all of you being so great and helping us get to this point and we will continue to do our best to make BitClub a company you can be proud to be associate with.
Here's to an incredible 2018 and beyond!
Sincerely,
-BitClub Support Team
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